I went with my three youngest grandsons to see the new Spiderman movie; \u201cSpider-Man: Brand New Day.\u201d\u00a0 And shockingly, I actually enjoyed it.\u00a0 We got there early enough to pick out good seats and let the kids buy mass quantities of popcorn and sugary drinks.\u00a0 So reinforced by these provisions we took our seats and watched the half hour of advertisements and coming attractions for all kinds of useless products and awful movies.\u00a0 Now it\u2019s been a few years since we went to this theater and in the meantime, it went out of business and been refurbished by its new owners.\u00a0 And they installed luxury pleather powered recliners instead of the usual crappy movie seats of yesteryear.\u00a0 So far, so good!<\/p>\n
So, I missed the previous Spiderman installment but I was told that in it another MCU character (Doctor Strange) performed some kind of magic-adjacent activity which eliminated knowledge of Peter Parker\u2019s existence completely from the human race including all his friends and the girl (MJ) that he loves.\u00a0 Now this seems particularly stupid but that is the situation.\u00a0 So, one of the plots of this movie is Parker getting up the courage to tell MJ that she has forgotten that they were once in love.\u00a0 Okay, that\u2019s an even stupider plot element but let\u2019s give the writers some slack to try and make that work.\u00a0 Then there\u2019s a plot element where Peter is having major problems with his spider powers.\u00a0 His ability to shoot webs and other skills seems to come and go.\u00a0 Okay, this is more of a standard superhero plot element so full speed ahead.<\/p>\n
And finally, some telepath is able to take control of human minds and force them to attack a shadowy government agency called the Department of Damage Control (DODC) for some unknown reason.\u00a0 I won\u2019t give away any spoilers by saying that DODC isn\u2019t a benign organization and the telepath controlling minds isn\u2019t completely unjustified in these actions.<\/p>\n
Well, before the end we have a whole sequence where Bruce Banner is telepathically controlled and forced to turn into the Hulk with predictable cataclysmic results and we find out that Spiderman has a quasi-working relationship with the comic book character \u201cThe Punisher\u201d an Italian American New Yorker whose real name is Frank Castle.\u00a0 Castle is a vigilante who doesn\u2019t have as many scruples as Spiderman when it comes to using firearms to thwart criminals.\u00a0 As an Italian American native New Yorker myself, I especially relished Castle\u2019s extremely accurate Bensonhurst accent and vocabulary.\u00a0 It felt like coming home.<\/p>\n
Well, anyway, the plot moves along in a reasonably superhero-ish manner and naturally our hero comes out the other side with some progress in his personal problems but no permanent solutions so he can be just as conflicted in the next Spiderman movie sometime in 2028.\u00a0 And that is all that can ever be said for a Spiderman movie.\u00a0 Also, the special effects were especially deft and fun to watch.\u00a0 So, the movie was quite entertaining and the boys enjoyed it thoroughly.\u00a0 Or maybe it was the snacks.<\/p>\n
Anyway, mission accomplished.\u00a0 We returned home and Camera Girl loaded down a table with spaghetti and meatballs along with some biscuits that these grandsons especially love to dunk in a meat sauce.\u00a0 What more could I ask for?<\/p>\n